Secret Trade Deal Spawns ‘We Will Not Obey’ Movement

In his epic book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman advises
“Resist Much. Obey Little.” But when it comes to corporations trampling
on local rights, the city of Madison, Wis., advises other cities and
counties to do what it has done: Resist much. Obey
not.

In October, the Madison City Council unanimously passed a resolution
declaring the city a “TPP-Free Zone,” and promising that if Congress
passes the Trans Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement, “We will
not obey” it.

The TPP is the largest global trade pact to be negotiated since the
World Trade Organization (WTO). Most of the details of the deal remain a
mystery. Negotiations are being conducted
in secret. But we know, from some of the drafts that have been leaked,
that the TPP would hand transnational corporations the power to “protect
their future profit potential” by suing countries, states, counties or
cities in order to wipe out existing laws—laws specifically designed to
protect communities’ best interests.

Those interests could include everything from internet freedom and banking and finance regulation, to the passing of bans on growing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

“Call it a sovereignty issue, or local control, or threat of lowering
local standards with regard to government procurement (elimination of
any “buy local” ordinances), food safety ordinances, living wage
ordinances, environmental requirements, prevailing wage requirements on
construction, etc.—[Madison City Council members] saw all these as
threats to their authority and the job they had been elected to do,”
said David Newby of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition. Newby played a
key role in passing the “TPP-Free Zone” resolution in Madison, and
another in Dane County, Wis.

The “TPP-Free Zone” concept is modeled after the successful grassroots strategy that helped defeat
a similar trade agreement in 1998, called the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI). The basic premise was to convince elected officials,
city by city, county by county, of the need to refuse to obey the MAI if
it became law. The anti-MAI grassroots effort succeeded by exposing the
dark side of the MAI, and by proving its unpopularity with the public.

Growing opposition

A scenario similar to the anti-MAI grassroots movement is unfolding
today, this time with the TPP as its target. According to the latest poll,
61 percent of the public in key countries, including the U.S., oppose
the TPP. Opposition has grown, thanks to the work of many groups,
including the Organic Consumers Association, who have publicly opposed
the deal, and launched massive public education campaigns to expose the
unprecedented secrecy surrounding the deal, and the potential for the
TPP to subvert democracy for the benefit of corporate profits.

TPP protesters recently turned out in mass in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. More than 400 organizations representing 15 million Americans have already petitioned
Congress to do away with Fast Track, a tactic the Obama Administration
wants to use in order to ram the deal through Congress, without debate.

But if efforts to thwart the deal fail, states, cities and counties can
follow the lead of Madison and Dane County by passing their own TPP-Free
zones. Ruth Caplan, with the Alliance for Democracy, hopes they will. In a recent interview, Caplan urged people to work with their local governments to “build a democratic movement of resistance.”

“This starts from the grass roots, in the communities where we live . . .
This is not, 'Please, Congress, do the right thing,' but language of
resistance. We need to say, 'If you create this secretly negotiated
corporate trade agreement and it is rubber-stamped by Congress, we will
not obey.'"

The Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission (PJC) has approved a TPP-Free Zone resolution, and says the Berkeley, Calif. city council could take it up this month.
For citizens or officials interested in passing TPP-Free Zone
resolutions in other states and counties, the Alliance for Democracy
website provides information, model municipal laws that can be edited to fit the needs of any community, and includes pointers on how to convince wavering local officials to pass “We Will Not Obey” resolutions.

The TPP, Monsanto and the future of food

There’s a long list of reasons to oppose the TPP. Food safety is right at the top—especially with a former Monsanto lobbyist leading U.S. negotiations on agricultural issues.

Specifically, the TPP would require
countries to accept food that meets only the lowest safety standards of
the collective participants. That means consumers could soon be eating
imported seafood, beef or chicken products that don’t meet even basic
U.S. food safety standards. And the (FDA) would be powerless to shut
down imports of these unsafe food or food ingredients.

Countries, including those in the European Union, could also find it increasingly difficult to ban, or even require
the labeling of, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) if biotech
companies determine that those countries’ strict policies restrict fair
trade and infringe on the companies’ “rights” to profit.

To top it off, corporations would be allowed to resolve trade disputes
in special international tribunals, effectively wiping out hundreds of
domestic and international food sovereignty laws. Products labeled fair
trade, organic, country-of-origin, animal-welfare approved, or GMO-free,
could all be challenged as “barriers to trade.”

With the world’s food supply, and consumers’ health, already endangered
by chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and climate change, the
U.S. and other governments should be looking for ways to promote
sustainable food and agriculture policies, not restrict governments’
abilities to do so. Instead, the Obama Administration is subverting the
principles of democracy in favor of handing a few transnational
corporations unprecedented power to put profits above the health and
well-being of consumers.

Fortunately citizens are protesting. And city and county governments are claiming the power to resist.